- Disposable to reusable. Such as water bottles, reusable food baggies, cloth napkins and so on. These are gifts that keep on giving while reducing consumption. Reuseit.com has gift ideas for everyone on your list (use the index in the left sidebar). If the recipient isn't so into green things, make sure to give something extra stylish that anyone would want to use.
- Cookware. Home-cooked meals are greener than eating out, so help make cooking fun with useful gadgets, high-quality cookware, or a cookbook.
- Homemade. If you are crafty, make something yourself. You can find lots of awesome ideas in the blogosphere.
- Handmade. Even if you aren't crafty yourself, you can buy somebody else's crafty design on Etsy. You can find amazing one-of-a-kind gifts made by a local artisan.
- Fair trade. Help support workers and artisans in less-developed countries with your purchase from a fair trade store such as Gifts with Humanity. You can find more here.
- Charitable. Instead of giving another set of dish towels to the person who already has everything, give a goat or a micro-loan to a person on the other side of the world in his or her behalf. Here are more ideas for charitable gifts.
- Recycled/ Upcycled. I personally do not want a purse or necklace made from old bottle caps, but I love the idea of dump trucks made from recycled milk cartons.
- Intangible. Instead of stuff, give the gift of experience, adventure, or your time: coupons for service, lessons, memberships to museums or zoos.
- Regifted. When you receive something you know you'll never use, donate or regift it! If you will be storing it for a while, you might want to label who gave it to you so that you don't accidentally give it back to the original giver. I personally have received back a gift I gave someone, though, and I was not one bit offended!
- Used. I love finding gifts at thrift stores (or Craig's List or garage sales)! Sometimes I find like-new items which can be gifted even to the non-eco-minded.
Here are some other green gift guides:
Sew, Mama, Sew's The Ultimate Handmade Holidays Master List 2010
Progressive Pioneer's Secret Santa Saturday Posts
Simple Organic's Clutter-free Gifts
Holiday Shopping Guide for Finding Greener Electronics
Condo Blue's Green Gifts that Suck (a cautionary post)
My Plastic-free Life's Green Gifts Don’t Have to Suck
Enviroblog's Don't Let Toxic Toys Grinch Your Holiday
Click here to read the complete Green Holidays series.
Note: This post contains affiliate links.
These are great ideas! And lots of wonderful links! You should link this to Saturday stumbles if they do it this week. I'm going to save a lot of the links for ideas for next year!
ReplyDelete